BYO Mug Policy

Why BYO Mugs?

The Bentleigh Farmers’ Market promotes sustainable food practices to ensure that our bodies and our planet are healthy. We encourage people to eat and drink produce that is grown as locally as possible, and sold with the least amount of packaging.

Having a coffee/chai or juice is a wonderful part of the farmers’ market experience and at our market you can do your bit to ensure that the drink you have is part of a healthy solution for you and the planet.

How do we do this?

We encourage all people to BYO Mugs for their drinks- reusing their own cups for a truly sustainable and satisfying experience.

We sell Keep Cups at the market for those who haven’t brought their own

We have a wonderful wash and go system, where dedicated volunteers collect our Bunny Cups (kindly donated by Jack and Jill Toothpaste), wash them and return for use at the Little Coffee Van and the Orange Juice Lady.

These two stalls came on board from the beginning to support our Towards Zero Waste policy. The Taraleigh Chai stall, also provide & wash their own mugs.

Still want a take away cup?

The BFM team have been trialling the effectiveness of composting Planet Cups for the coffee stall. After 4 months the first batch of coffee cups have been returned to the earth as divine compost. The lids haven’t composted so quickly and we continue to evaluate the effectiveness of the cups and lids.

So what’s all the fuss about anyway?

Research from CSIRO shows that one third of the world’s global marine debris comes directly from the beverage industry? Given that about 7 billion tonnes of rubbish enter our oceans every year, this means a whopping 3 billion tonnes of beverage waste is littered per year. As a result of this waste between 700,000 and 1 million seabirds are killed from entanglement or ingestion of marine debris each year. 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement.*

The amount of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean, where ocean currents take it, amounts to an island larger than France, Italy and Spain combined.

Each time we consume a drink in a one- off container we are part of the problem and not the solution. But every time we choose to reuse or use truly compostable containers we are choosing a healthier planet and helping to save the lives of sea birds, turtles and other marine mammals, not to mention our own health .We know that you want to be part of the solution, and we are helping make it easy for you to do the right thing!